Saturday, 20 June 2015

A week today sees the return of the CICE. For those of you who don't know, this is the "Cardiff Independent Comic Expo". A great little comic convention right in the centre of the City.

Cardiff Expo originally started a few years back in early 2012, if memory serves. Kris, Jim and I were there with our comic book, "Lou Scannon" and it was a fantastically run con.
It was, by convention standards, relatively small but it was intimate, fun and had a brilliant focus on comic books. It supported small press and local talent in a way that hadn't been seen before in Cardiff and we adored working it. We always had a great reception there, sold a lot of books and generally got a lot of decent interaction with our readers.
The con grew in popularity over the following couple of years and looked like it was set to go from strength to strength.
Then the big boys seemed to move in.
A convention giant decided to start it's own convention in Cardiff International Arena. Not a problem in itself but it was booked for the same date as the original CICE. It's one of those cons with celebrities and huge halls and stuff like that.
With that in mind and numerous other reasons, CICE was put on a temporary hiatus.

As time has passed though, this convention giant has seemed to move away from supporting and promoting small press and UK independent comics and seems to be focussing more on the merchandise side of things. It's not really something I would call a comic con anymore, to be honest. It would be more accurate to call it a Celebrity and Merchandise convention.
Not that I'm slagging that off, you understand, but we've kind of been marginalised. There's no real interest at these giant cons, to support small press. I won;t name the company for obvious reasons but chances are, if you're from the area, you know who I am referring to anyway. Like I said, I'm not slagging them off as such, I just think that if they no longer want to support us, we need an actual comic convention that will.

SO as a result of really wanting to push and support the UK independent and small press comic scene, for one day only, the Cardiff Independent Comic Expo is back! I couldn't be happier! This con genuinely has one of the best atmospheres of any of the cons I have worked! (And I've worked quite a few now!)
This really is a REAL comic convention.

As a way of showing our support for the CICE, a bunch of the UK's small press and indie talent and myself have contributed towards an anthology that will be given away FREE with the first 100 tickets sold!

Kris received the proof copy the other day and sent us all these pics

These tickets have now all sold, but you never know, maybe extra copies will be kicking around!
Tomorrow is the last chance you have to pre-book tickets for the event! Get on that by clicking here and getting yours!

You may remember that a while back, I posted about a new comic that I plan to launch this year! that's still on course though its taking longer to get finished on account of all the work I have on at the moment, but I have done a five page short for the anthology as a little taster of the main comic to come!
Here's the first page of my story (Which is incredibly meta):

Written and art by me, lettering done by the great HdE

So if you love comic books and are looking for new reads and stuff, you should get to Cardiff Masonic Hall on Saturday the 27th June and get your Geek on! Family friendly cosplay is more than welcome too, so get your glad rags on and come party with us!

Once again, you can visit their website and buy yourself a ticket or two here

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Well... Wow! I can't believe this is my first post of 2015 and we're already in to June! That's appalling and I apologise, profusely.

I've been really rather busy as of late though and the blog hasn't been in the forefront of my mind!

Working as a freelance Illustrator seems to be working out quite well for me. I have had a relatively successful first year and am hoping to improve on it going in to year 2.
My new comic "Druid Investigations" is over half way penciled and inked. I'm hoping to have the entire thing ready and in print for Thought Bubble in November, along with Lou Scannon #8,

Fingers Crossed.

Anyways, the latest art trend seems to be adult colouring pages. Now, I colour a lot in my spare time anyway. All my own work, obviously, but I looked into these adult colouring books. The art is more often than not, very intricate.. but consists mostly of things like butterflies. Not really my thing and I assumed that there would be other people out there, like me, that would want to colour but not colour things like flowers and butterflies.
So I started designing my own geeky colouring pages and then putting them on etsy as instantly downloadable PDF colouring pages.

Here are some examples for you to check out:

These bad boys are only £1.50 each and are a hell of a lot of fun to colour! I even had a crack at the viking one myself! Check this bad boy out:

If you would like to have a go at one of these or my other designs (They're apparently good for helping adults cope with stress, anxiety and ADHD) then you can buy them, along with a load of my other prints, HERE.

You can also "like" my facebook page if you want updates about upcoming pages and the such, HERE.

I'll be posting some images from my new comic project very soon. Including some pages that will be in the upcoming anthology for the Cardiff Independent Comic Expo being held at the end of the month.

Not THAT I can't wait for.

More on that in my next blog.

I also wanted to make you aware that I am taking commissions. I have been developing a somewhat super cartoony style that seems to be getting quite popular with the help of Instagram.

About Me

I'm the Creator of the Small Press comic books LOU SCANNON and DRUID INVESTIGATIONS. Co-Creator of BRUCE OUTBACK and Co-Founder of ATTIC STUDIOS.
I like long walks off short piers and other adrenaline inducing stupidity.
If you like tangfastic Haribo and Heavy Metal, you and I are going to get on just fine.